In The Trenches: A SyndCon 2010 Q&A with SOE's John Smedley

SOE's John Smedley on SOE's older titles and shares his views on guilds and gamer communities.

Last weekend, SOE President John Smedley appeared at the ninth
annual meeting of The Syndicate, a thousand-strong influential
multi-game guild in its fifteenth year of existence. Actually,
“appeared” is a misstatement – the man affectionately known as Smed
chatted, commiserated, dined, and imbibed with the members, all the
while fielding untold numbers of questions and absorbing countless
rants during the five day event.
To top it off, Ten Ton Hammer was on hand to ask Mr. Smedley a
wide range of questions from DC Universe Online’s impending launch to
the fate of Star Wars Galaxies and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. His
answers appear below.

Ten Ton Hammer:
First, I have to give you props for the last panel. For an hour and a
half you took questions, some of which were pretty incendiary, from an
audience full of not only MMORPG veterans but by and large WoW players.
A lot of these questions got into undisclosed projects, which is why we
can’t air the content of the panel, but by and large, and your were
candid, cool-headed, and sympathetic without being patronizing. And,
what’s more, I think you took a room full of jaded gamers and won
over a lot of hearts and minds.

I don’t know how many game execs would or could do what you just
did in that conference room. Are we seeing SOE turn over a new leaf in
this industry or start a new chapter in online community management?

John Smedley, President, Sony Online Entertainment:
I would say we’re taking a more noticeable turn, but I’m the same
person I was ten years ago- just more experienced now. Groups
like The Syndicate – you don’t see that kind of cohesive organization
unless it’s full of players that want to participate in the process. We
want to respond to that and make that a part of what we do.

Interacting with people – it takes a lot of energy, but you get
more than you put in. You saw this at Fan Faire too – sure, we get the
hardcore questions, we get the people that are pissed at us, but they
love that we’re interacting and thinking and listening. Even if we have
to say no, they’re there for a reason, because they love these kind of
games.

TTH: I know you’ve consulted heavily with groups
like the Syndicate over the years, stretching back to the Community
Summit program. But is this renewed effort totally on the design
side, or will you be carrying it over to marketing as well?

Smed: I would say we’ve started to include that in
our marketing mix, but I wouldn’t say that we’re directing all of our
marketing towards guilds. It’s something that we’re still evolving
through.

TTH: Speaking of Fan Faire, I’ve been to a lot
of fan events, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fan audience in this
industry as vocal as yours.

Smed: Yea, they will go to the mat with some of
our developers. But, you know what? We’ve got to listen to them.
That doesn’t mean that everything they say, we’ll do. But we’ll
listen, and we’ll give honest feedback and be as direct as we
can. I don’t want us to be a company where we’re giving grey
answers – black or white, yes or no, and then we’ll follow through on
what we’ll say we’ll do. Those are the things I want us to be known
for.

TTH: You’ve come to the last two SyndCon
events; last year you even travelled to Austin for SyndCon 2009. What
makes this event special?

Smed: It’s kind of funny – the reason I went to last year’s Syndicate is that I read Sean’s book (Legend of the Syndicate)
a few years back, and it really impacted me. It impacted me because I
got to read a really well written account of why a really major
guild did not go from EverQuest to EverQuest II. It hit me like a ton
of bricks, not because I didn’t know these things, but reading and
thinking about the decisions that we made during development really had
an impact on me.

TTH: Has that impacted the course you’re taking with EverQuest II now, with the now free-to-play EQ2 Extended ?

Smed:
The free-to-play move is really pure business. It has mostly to do with
the competition – not that they’re all moving that way because some are
some aren’t. But the competitive environment has changed, acquiring
players is different now than it was a few years ago.

TTH: Your other products that players either seem to love or hate – Star Wars Galaxies being the most obvious example – what’s the future of these games?

Smed: I
can say in the case of SWG, it won’t be stopping in the foreseeable
future. A lot of people think it’s going to end when SWTOR comes
out, and I don’t think they need to worry about that.

TTH: What about Vanguard?

Smed:
We’re thinking about specific next steps for Vangaurd, but we’re not
shutting it down or anything like that. We want to add more stuff to
it. Will we change the business model? That’s the question people keep
asking me. Will it go free-to-play? I don’t know – we’ve
discussed it. What we’ll decide? I’m not sure yet. We’re going to
see where EverQuest II Extended goes. But certainly if we make a
decision like that, it won’t be without deciding to add more content to
the game.

TTH: DC Universe seems to be a
far more revolutionary thing than a lot of people give SOE credit for –
you’re coming up with forums tailor-made for a console community, for
one thing. Like EQ2 Extended, is DCUO another big decision point or
risk for SOE?

Smed: It’s not a risk,
because we’re positive there’s a market there. It’ll take time,
money, and resources to do it right, and we’ve made a conscious
decision to do that because we think the PlayStation 3 is a great place
for online gaming. We helped to make the PlayStation Network so we know
there’s a big market out there. We just want to expand – you’re
seeing us, Final Fantasy XIV, and I think you’re going to see a lot
more MMOs on consoles. Will those console MMOs be just like the
ones on PC? No. Will they be just as cool? Yes. Will they be cool in
different ways? Yes.

TTH: We’re out of
time, or else I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on the
future of console MMOs. To wrap it up, I just want to thank you for
showing some love to The Syndicate and Internet gamer communities like
ours. We might disagree from time to time, but SOE, Ten Ton Hammer and
sites like ours, and The Syndicate all have one thing in common – we
exist for the good of the community.

Smed:
That’s exactly right. If the MMO industry thrives, we all thrive. The
game is the center, but the people around it are what matters.